"Foxes, Morons and Oxymorons"
by Joel Bowman
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody
endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
~ Frédéric Bastiat, from "The State" (1848)
Miami International Airport, Florida - "Clowns to the left of us... jokers to the right... and a center that cannot seem to hold. What a weird and whacky world we live in! Here’s the latest, from The Wall Street Journal: "The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics." President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into economy. Like our dear readers, we too suffer the popular presses with a wry smile. That is to say, we read the papers more for comedic value than for any special insights. Rarely are we disappointed.
Continues the Journal..."A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s. Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China. Recent examples include President Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the “golden share” Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct.
This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.
TDS vs TDS: As mentioned before in these Notes, there’s TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and then there’s TDS (Trump Devotion Syndrome). Roughly equal and opposing forces, they tear the world’s most powerful republic to the right and to the left, stretching the middle until it’s so threadbare it’s practically transparent.
One group – the “deranged” – thinks the man is a lunatic, a narcissist, the Führer of the Fourth Reich. Everywhere they look they see men in brown shirts, come to arrest their gardener... party poopers at the pride parade... and funny police here to cancel their mirthless comedians. It is these roomy craniums, premium Democrat real estate, in which Trump is said to live, “rent free.”
Meanwhile, the other cadre – the “devoted” – sees before it a different figure altogether. For these folk, Trump was spared a bullet by the very same hand that delivered the World Cup to the ‘86 Argentine soccer team: “la mano de dios.” (The “Hand of God.”) To them, The Donald is here on earth to practice the “art of the deal” on America’s enemies (and friends), to tax and tariff at will and whim, and to personally deliver America’s economy unto the land of milk and honey... forever and ever, amen.
As to which faction shall prevail, we do not pretend to know. We only observe, with unfashionable dispassion, that “State Capitalism” does not boast an enviable track record, whether the commands emanate from an alleged Democrat, a so-called Republican... or a proudly independent crackpot. Of course, that hasn’t stopped many a “chief commander” from trying...
Public Disservice: The 20th Century began with Teddy Roosevelt, who laid the “antitrust” groundwork to go after the so-called “robber barons” of the day... and William Howard Taft who used it to take down America’s richest man, JD Rockefeller (who only grew richer as a result)...
Then came Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the biggest intervener of all, who not only dragged a weary nation into “The War to End All Wars,” but also found time to establish the National War Labor Board, the Food Administration, and the Fuel Administration, as well as bringing the country’s railroads under federal control. A ceaseless, compulsive meddler, Wilson also instituted the Federal Income Tax (under The Revenue Act of 1913) and unleashed the Frankensteinian abomination, known as the Federal Reserve, the very same year.
Barely had the Founding Fathers time to roll in their graves when along came another World War... and another interventionist busybody in the portly personhood of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Emerging from the chaos of the Great Depression, like a cold sore after a spring break party, FDR offered America more of what got them into trouble in the first place; massive state intervention.
As well as heavy wartime economic controls, resource rationing, and industrial mobilization, FDR’s “New Deal” brought with it centrally planned disasters in the form of massive public works projects, banking regulations, agricultural subsidies, not to mention Social Security, now the single largest line item on the federal government’s balance sheet.
Next came President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who oversaw massive expansion of Social Security, vastly increased federal involvement in public schools (through the National Defense Education Act of 1958) and rolled out the Interstate Highway System (1956), the single largest public works program in US history to that point. (Because, without the government, we’re all on a road to nowhere... right?)
Fast-forward to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the whole Vietnam fiasco... then came Nixon’s shock, followed by price and wage controls and the final abandonment of gold-backed money in favor of the fiat house of cards we see today...
President Ronald Reagan promised a “Prouder, Stronger, Better” nation for all... but “Morning in America” was over before brunch, as the national debt nearly tripled under Reagan’s watch, soaring from about $998 billion to $2.85 trillion by the time he and Nancy left the White House.
Foxes, Morons and Oxymorons: So far, the Third Millennium has seen America in a constant state of warfare abroad and welfare at home. Presidents Bush and Obama oversaw the disaster that was the Global Financial Crisis, rewarding the pinstriped perps not with jail time, but with a never-ending acronym salad of handouts and corporate welfare, including Bush’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which saw hundreds of billions of dollars syphoned from Main Street and pumped directly into Wall Street.
Then came the Covid Hysteria, almost certainly the result of a lab leak from a US government-funded research facility in Wuhan, China, which gave the feds the pretext – first under Donald I, then Joseph Biden – to take control of the economy in a way that would have made the aforementioned meddlers blush. And all the while the bombs fell overseas – on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya... and most recently, on Iran.
Yes, dear reader, “State Capitalism” is nothing new; even if the concept itself is an oxymoron. Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."
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